Mobile devices make sales work more complicated

We're frequently being told that the use of mobile devices makes our work lives easier, but it seems that a sizable percentage of people don't share that view.

Mobile sales solution company Seismic has released the results of its Salesforce Spotlight survey showing the complex relationship between business users and mobile technology.

The survey carried out amongst Dreamforce attendees reveals that Salesforce is still the main platform for handling sales data and that 57 percent of respondents use the package for more than two hours a day. When it comes to mobile access though, 21 percent said they had no plans to implement the Salesforce1 platform.

Of those who have already implemented Salesforce1, 66 percent say they access it via both smartphone and tablet. Those that use it on just one platform favor their smartphones, but more than 60 percent of respondents using both reached for their tablet more frequently than their smartphone for CRM, content management and presentation tasks.

Perhaps most interesting though is mobile's perceived impact on working lives. Whilst the previous survey in 2013 showed that seven percent of Dreamforce users thought mobile technology would complicate their work life, this year's findings show nearly 20 percent feel that mobile technology has made their work lives more complicated in the past year.

"While our survey findings validate the growing importance of mobile devices in the enterprise, it was surprising to find that users view mobile technology as a complication to their work lives," says Seismic CEO Doug Winter. "Cutting-edge mobile technologies should be simplifying marketing and sales processes, not complicating them. Organizations need to become more strategic and agile when implementing new software if they want to gain a competitive advantage".

The full report is available to download from the Seismic website.

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